release date: Oct. 1, 2021
format: vinyl (first edition incl. 7'' single)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,64]
producer: Mikkel Damgaard
label: A:larm / Universal - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 2. "The Troubles" - 3. "Kun længes skygger mod aftenens fald" - 6. "Ægte Nordic noir" - 10. "Exitstrategi" - - 7'' single, A 1) "Andy Warhol's piger"
13th studio album by Love Shop following 2½ years after the album Brænder boksen med smukke ting (Mar. 2019), and the album (as well as band) is primarily the product by songwriter and vocalist Jens Unmack and keyboardist and musical composer, arranger, and producer Mikkel Damgaard, who has been an official member since 2011, although, he's taken part in the project since 1999.
The title of this new album translates to "Men Alive in Dead Relations", and death does play an everpresent part in this band. Firstly, it was a figurative presence when the band's main composer, guitarist, arranger, and producer Hilmer Hassig decided to leave the trio back in late 2003. It was a devastating decision that resulted in a practical disbandment - they couldn't possibly continue, and the disbandment was a reality. Together, they planned a farewell tour, still executed in late 2003. Hassig then settled as studio technician, arranger, instrumentalist, and producer, while Both Unmack and keyboardist / backing vocalist Henrik Hall initiated independent solo careers; however, after Hassig became the victim of a drive-by incident resulting in his sudden death in late 2008, Hall and Unmack initially reunited as Love Shop to honour their friend for several memorial concerts in 2009. The positive experience of playing together again led them to revive the band, and to write and compose new material, which saw the light of day with Frelsens hær ['Salvation Army'] (Nov. 2010). Death's ugly face appeared again when Hall died Jan. 2011 - following years battling with cancer, and then as opposed to ending their common revitalised life-project, Unmack instead decided to continue Love Shop, although, he is the only remaining member of the original line-up. The following album Skandinavisk lyst ['Scandinavian Lust'] (Oct. 2012) both honours Hassig and Hall and simultaneosly lights a torch of life in what appears as the strong will to carry on. In spite, and not to succumb.
Levende mænd i døde forhold is then of course with reference to those who are here. In the band Love Shop, it's Unmack and Damgaard, and perhaps it's not to be taken too literal, but the title suggests that despite seeming alive, you can may still live your life with a presence / an implication of something that appears dead. This could be an ever-present sensation of people playing a major part in your life - it could also be taken more literal, suggesting your personal relations appearing dead.
Nevertheless, Unmack and Damgaard have proven to have much to offer. Their songs are not surprisingly often dealing with existentialism, and Unmack is forever bound to a Scandic melancholy. He would probably refer to it as "Nordic noir" - something in the DNA of people of the North, which may be found in the works by Hammershøi, Krøyer, Grieg, Sibelius, Munch, Bergman, Von Trier, Björk, Brun, Kent...
The album seems like the second chapter to the 2019 album, not as a copy, but more as the very essence of a sound that has become grounded in the name of Love Shop on its now most recent three albums, starting with Risiko from 2017. I find that the new album is very much in the spirit of the former two - not that it's a lesser work of art, it just feels more like a condensation, an album that doesn't show us something new, but more as new angles on the same view, which can both contain surprises as well as recognition of what we already know.
Not their best, but still far from their lesser works, and definitely worth the price. And then, I absolutely just love the inclusion of a 7'' inch bonus single stressing that vinyl format is very much alive.
